


No Safe Place.

by Mulders_Scully



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Other, Post-The X-Files: I Want To Believe (2008), The X-Files References, The X-Files Revival, david duchovny - Freeform, gillian anderson - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-28
Updated: 2018-09-18
Packaged: 2018-09-27 13:53:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10023659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mulders_Scully/pseuds/Mulders_Scully
Summary: I don't know where I got the idea that once you've come through a very dark time, after you've confronted the worst possible demons and defeated them, that everything's going to be just fine.... Doesn't work that way





	1. One

One.

I don't know where I got the idea that once you've come through a very dark time, after you've confronted the worst possible demons and defeated them, that everything's going to be just fine.... Doesn't work that way.

Not that life wasn't better for us, at least for a while. Seven years ago, things were pretty bad around here. Bad as they can get. People died. My wife and daughter and I came close to being among them. But when it was over, and we were whole and still had each other, well, we did as the song says. We picked ourselves up, dusted ourselves off, and started all over again.... More or less. But the scars still remained.

We went through our own version of post-traumatic stress. My wife, Dana Scully, certainly did. She had lost members of her family when she was fourteen - I really mean lost; her parents, brothers, and sister vanished into thin air one night - and Scully had to wait twenty years to learn their fate. When it was over there were no joyful reunions.

There was more. Scully's aunt paid the ultimate price in her bid to shine a light on the decades-old secret.

And then there was Marcus White, a career criminal who was just a kid when Scully's family vanished, who had been with her that night.

Twenty-five years later, against his own nature, he helped us find out what really happened. As they say, no good deed goes unpunished. He got shot and nearly died for his trouble.

I don't think there were many people who had not heard about it. It was all over the news. They were going to make a movie about it at one point, but that fell through, which, if you ask me, was for the best.

For Scully, the trauma of it all never ended. Every day, she feared history repeating itself with the family she had now. Me. And our daughter, Emily. The trouble was, the steps she took to make sure it didn't happen to us.

Scully's efforts to keep our fourteen-year-old daughter, Emily, safe from the big, bad world were pushing the child to experience it as quickly as she could.  
I'd kept hoping we'd eventually work our way through the darkness and come out the other side. But it didn't look as though that was going to happen anytime soon.

  
Emily and Scully had shouting matches pretty much on a daily basis, about anything and everything.

  
Emily ignoring curfew. Emily didn't call when she got to where she was going. Emily didn't call to let us know she would be late. Emily going to one friend's house but ended up going to another and didn't update her mother. Emily wanted to go to a concert in Rosslyn but wouldn't be able to get home until one in the morning.

Mum said no.

I tried to be the peacemaker in these disputes, usually with little success. I'd talk with Scully privately, assure her that I understood her motives. That I too didn't want anything bad to happen to Emily, but that she needed the freedom to learn to cope in her own world. I could understand that Emily was feeling suffocated.

These fights generally ended with one of them storming from the room. A door being slammed. Emily telling Scully that she hated her, then knocking something over as she left the room in temper.

  
"God, she's just like me," Scully would often say. "I was so rebellious at her age. I just don't want her making the same mistakes I made."

Scully, even now, thirty-two years later, carried a lot of guilt from the night her family disappeared. Part of her still believed that if she had not been out with a boy named Marcus, without her parents permission or knowledge, and if she hadn't gotten drunk and passed out once she had fallen into her own be, she might have known what happened and, somehow, saved the ones closest to her.  
Even though the facts never concluded this was the case. Scully had always believed she had been punished for her misbehavior. She didn't want Emily even having to blame herself for something so tragic. That meant installing in Emily the importance of resisting peer pressure, of never allowing yourself to be put in a difficult situation, of listening to that little voice inside your head when it says, This is wrong and I have to get the hell out of here.

Or as Emilys says, "Blah, blah, blah, blah."

I wasn't much help when I told Scully almost every kid goes through a period like this. Even if Em did make mistakes, it didn't have to follow that the consequences would have to be as grave as Scully had endured.

Emily, god help us, was a teenager. In six years, if Scully and I hadn't killed ourselves by then, would see Em mature into a sensible young woman.

It was hard to believe that day would ever come.

Like that night when Emily was thirteen and hanging out at the mall with her friends at the same time Scully happened to be there looking for shoes. Scully our girl outside of Macy's sharing a cigarette. Scully confronted her in full view of her classmates and ordered her to the car. Scully was so rattled and busy tearing into Emily that she had run a stop sign. Nearly getting broadsided by a dump truck.

"We could have been killed," Scully told me with her head held firmly in her hands, letting the tears roll down her guilt-ridden face. "I was out of control, Mulder. I totally lost it."

It was after that incident that she decided, for the first time, to take a break from us. for our sake - more specifically, for Emily's as much as our own. A timeout, she called it. She had bounced the idea off Naomi Kinzler, the therapist Scully had been seeing for years, and she saw merit in it.

"Remove yourself from the conflict situation," Kinsler said. "You're not running away, you're not abandoning your responsibilities. But you're going to take some time to reflect, to regroup. You can give yourself permission to do that. This gives Emily time to think, too. She may not like what you're doing, but she might come to understand it. You suffered a terrible wound when you lost your family and its a wound that will never completely heal. Even if your daughter can't appreciate that now, I believe me someday she will."

Scully got a place over on Arlington, not far from the old apartment she had while she had been training to be a Doctor. It was a nice neighborhood. Quiet. A little further away from our home than I'd of liked. I hated the idea, especially when she had suggested staying at a budget-minded Just Inn Time to save money, I said no way. If this was going to happen I needed to know she was in a nice place, and safe. The Just Inn was not only a dump, but it had been being used as a brothel and a white-slave operation had been running out of it a few years back.

Over my dead body would she be staying there.

Scully had only been gone a week, but it felt like a year. What surprised me was how much Emily was also missing her mother.

"She doesn't love us anymore," Emily said one night over a microwaved lasagna.

  
"That's not true," I said.

  
"Okay, she doesn't love me anymore."

  
"The reason your mother is taking a break is because she loves you too much. She knows she went too far, that she overreacted, and she just needs some time to get her head together."

  
"Well tell her to speed it up."

  
When Scully returned, things were better for a month, maybe even six weeks. But soon the peace treaty started to crumble. Minor incursions at first. Then all-out warfare.

  
When they had one of their battles, feelings would be hurt and it would take several days for a normal life - whatever that was, to resume. I'd attempted mediation, but these things had to run their course.

Things would be good. And then they'd be bad.

The other day they were really bad.

Emily had wanted to go with two of her girlfriends to Brookmount to a huge used-clothing, bazaar that was running midweek. They could only go at night because they had school during the day. Like the concert in Rosslyn, it would mean a late return home on the train. i offered to drive them up, kill some time, then bring them back, but Emily would have none of it. She and her friends weren't five. They wanted to do this on their own.

"There's no way," Scully said, standing at the stove making dinner. Breaded lamb cutlets and wild rice, as I remember. "Mulder, tell you're with me on this. There's no way she's doing that.

Before I could weigh in, Emily screamed, "Are you kidding? I'm not going to fucking Budapest. It's Brookmount!"

This was relatively new. The use of foul language. It was not unheard of for Scully or me to drop the F-bomb when we were angry or frustrated, but it was rare, and never around Emily.

"Don't you ever speak to your mother that way, Em," I said sternly, pointing my finger at her, "You're grounded for two weeks."

I felt that reprimand was adequate and looked over at Scully for reassurance, which she gave me, with a gentle nod of her head and pursed lips. Before she could turn back to the stove and continue cooking dinner, a stunned Emily came back with: "How long are you going to take it out on me that you couldn't save your stupid family? I wasn't even born, Okay? It's your fucking fault, not mine."

A verbal knife to the heart with that one.

I could see Emily's face, instant regret, and something else. Fear. She'd crossed a line and she knew it. Maybe, if she'd had the chance she'd have withdrawn the comment, offered an apology, but Scully's hand came up so quickly, she never had a chance.

"That's it, get to your room!" Scully screamed and pushed her toward the door leading out of the kitchen into the hallway. 

"SCULLY!" I shouted. Her outburst shocked me. I'd never, ever seen her lay a finger on Emily.

But as I yelled, Emily stumbled to the side and put out a hand instinctively to brace her fall in case she lost her footing.

Her hand hit a vase filled with flowers sitting on the counter. The contents of the vase spilled to the ground, and the glass smashed into large shards under Emily's palm.  
The Scream. Jesus, the scream. Not just that, blood poured from her hand.

"Oh, God!" Scully cried. "Oh my God!"

She grabbed a towel and pressed on to the wound trying to stop the flow of blood. Tears were streaming down Emily's face. I wrapped my arms tightly around her while Scully, using her doctor skills, tended to her hand.

"She needs stitches," Scully said.

I looked down at the towel, which was Now red with Emily's blood, then back to Scully's panic-stricken face. I nodded my head purposefully and dropped a quick kiss on Emily's head, before saying, "Let's go."

We took Her to Sibley Memorial Hospital.

"You can tell them the truth," Scully told Emily. "You can tell them what I did. I deserve to be punished. If they call the police, they call the police. I'm not going to make you say something that's not true."

Emily told the doctor she had been listening to Adele's Rolling in the Deep, iPod buds in ears, dancing around the kitchen like an idiot when she lost her footing and fell into the vase.

We brought Emily home, her hand well stitched and wrapped in bandages. The next day, Scully moved out for the second time.

  
She hasn't been back yet.

 

.......................................


	2. Two.

Just because Scully was no longer living with Emily and I didn't mean we were strangers to each other. We spoke daily, sometimes even met for lunch. Her first week away, the three of us met for lunch at a Bistro Basque, over on Wisconsin Avenue for Dinner. The girls both had salmon and I went for the chicken stuffed with mushrooms and spinach. We were all on our best behavior. Not a word about the trip to the hospital, even though Scully couldn't keep her eyes off Emily's bandaged hand. The unreality of the meal was exceeded at the end of the evening when Emily and I dropped Scully off at her place and drove home alone.

She had fallen in lucky with the apartment in Georgetown. Scully had a friend at work who was leaving the last week of June for a trip to Brazil and not planning on returning until September. Scully remembered her saying she'd tried to sublet the place for the summer, get someone who could take over the rent while she was away. She'd found no takers. A day before her friend was due to leave, Scully said she'd take the apartment. The friend cleared it with the landlord, an old guy named Barney, and then it was a go. 

I hadn't expected her to be gone until Labor Day, but as each day passed, and Scully showed no inclination to return. I was starting to wonder. At times I lay awake at night, half of the bed empty next to me, wondering if Scully would look for another place if this dragged out until September when her friend returned.

About a week and a half after she left I dropped by her place around five, figuring she would be home from her job at MedStar Universiy Hospital, Where she worked as a Children's physician. 

I was right. I saw her car parked between a sporty-looking Cadillac and an old blue pickup I recognized to be Barney's. He was cutting the grass down the side of the house, limping with each step, almost as if one leg was shorter than the other. Scully was sitting on the front porch, feet propped up on the railing nursing a glass of White wine when I pulled up to the house.

It was, I had to admit, a pretty nice place, an old colonial house on Prospect Street, Just north of Francis Scott Key Bridge. I no doubt belonged to some prominent Family years before Barny had bought it and converted it into apartments. Two on the ground floor and two upstairs.

Before I could say hello to my wife, Barney spotted me and killed the mower.

"Hey, how ya doin'?" he called out. Barney viewed Scully and me as minor celebrities, although ours was not the kind of fame anyone would want, and he seemed to enjoy brushing up against us.

"I'm good," I said. "Don't let me keep you from your work there."

"I've got two more houses to do after this one," he said, wiping his brow with the back of his hand, Barney owned at least a dozen homes that he'd turned into rental units around Washington, although from what he'd told me in previous conversation, I'd learned that this was one of the nicer ones and he spent more time on its upkeep. I wondered whether he was planning to put it on the market before long.

"Your missus is right up there on the porch," he said.

"I see her. You look like you could use a cool drink right about now."

" I'm good. I hope things are working out."

"Excuse me," I said.

"Between you and the wife." He gave me a wink, then turned back to his mower.

Scully rested her wine on the railing and stood out of her chair as I climbed the porch steps. 

"Hey," she said. I expected her to offer me a cold one, and when she didn't I wondered if I'd called at a bad time. Worry washed over her face. "Everything's okay?"

"Everything's fine," I said.

"Is Em okay?" she asked.

"Scully, I told you everything is fine."

Reassured, she back down and put her feet back on the railing. I notice her phone is face-down on the arm of the wooden chair, holding down a flyer headlined 'Does Your Home Have Mold?'

"May I sit?"

She tipped her head to the chair next to her. I pointed to the flyer. "Problems with the new pad? You show Barney that and he'll flip out, Scully" I smirked.

Scully glanced down at the flyer, an amused look spread over her face and she shook her head. "No. It was already here when I came out to sit." She rested her head on the back of the chair, kept her feet on the railing. She sighed. "I never did this at home. Just decompressed at the end of the day."

"That's probably because we don't have a porch with a railing," I said. "I'll build you one if you want?

That prompted a chuckle. "You?"

Construction was not one of the manly arts at which I excelled. "Okay, well I could have someone build it. Where I lack in hammering skills I make up for in writing checks."

"I just -- at home, there's always something I have to do, right then. But here, when I get home from work, I sit here and watch the cars go by. That's it, gives me time to think. You know?"

"I guess."

"I mean, you've got all summer to unwind." She had me there. As a teacher, I had July and August to recharge my batteries. Scully being a physician could work long hours with little time off. "So this is my holiday, sitting here and doing nothing for an hour at the end of the day."

"Good," I said. "If that is working for you, then I'm happy."

She turned to look at me. "No, you're not."

"I just want wants good for you."

"I don't know what's good for me anymore. I sit here thinking I've removed myself from the source of my anxiety, all the fighting and nonsense at home with Em, and then I realize I am the source of my anxiety and I can't get away from myself."

"That's Garrison Keillor story," I said, "about the old couple who can't get along wondering whether to take a vacation, and the man says, 'Why pay good money to be miserable someplace else when I can be perfectly miserable at home.'

She frowned. "You think we're an old couple?"

"That wasn't the point of the story."

"I won't stay here forever," Scully said, having to raise her voice as Barney shifted his mowing activity to the front yard. The smell of freshly cut grass wafted our way. "I'm taking it a day at a time."

As much as I wanted her to come home, I wasn't going to beg her. She had to do this in her own time When she was good and ready"

"What have you told Teresa?" Scully asked. Teresa Moretti, the woman who came in to clean our place once a week. four or five years ago, when Scully and I found ourselves so busy we couldn't seem to get to the most basic house choirs, we'd asked around about a cleaning lady and found Teresa. Even though i was off for the summer and possessed the requisite skills to tidy a house, Scully thought it was unfair to Teresa to lay her off for July and August. 

"She needs that money," Scully had said at the time. Normally, I wouldn't even see Teresa. I'd be at school. But six days ago I was there when she let herself in with the key we had provided her. She didn't miss a trick. After noticing that Scully's makeup and other items were not in evidence, that her robe was not laid over the chair in our bedroom, she'd asked if Scully was away. 

Now on the porch with my wife, I said, "I told her you were enjoying a little time on your own. I thought that would do it, but then she wanted to know where you'd gone, whether I'd b joining you, was Em going, how long would we be gone..."

"She's just worried we're going to cut her back to every other week or once a month."

I nodded. "She comes tomorrow. I'll put her mind at ease."

Scully tipped the wine glass p to her lips. "Did you know those teachers?" she asked.

Those two retired schoolteachers who had been killed in their own home a few days ago, not more than a mile from here. From what I'd read and seen on the TV news, the cops were baffled, Rona Wedmore, the police detective we'd been involved with seven years ago, was the lead investigator and had as much said they couldn't come up with a motive and there were no suspects. At least none the local police would take about.

The idea that a couple of retired folks, with no known connections to any criminal activity whatsoever, could be slaughtered in their own home had led to a sense of unease in Cathedral Heights. Some - particularly the news shows - were calling this the "Summer of fear" in the community.

"We never crossed paths, I told Scully."We didn't teach in the same schools."

"It's a horrible thing," she said. "Senseless."

"There's always a reason," I said. "Maybe not one that makes sense, but a reason nonetheless."

There were beads of sweat on Scully's wine glass. 

"Hot one today," I said. "Wonder if it's going to be nice over the weekend. Maybe we could all do something together."

I went to reach for her phone so I could open the weather app, check the forecast, the sort of thing I did at home all the time if my phone wasn't nearby. But before I could reach it, Scully moved it to the other arm of the chair, beyond my reach. 

"I heard it's going to be nice," she said. "Why don't we talk on Saturday,"

Barney went down the other side ith his gas mower.

"He said he hopes things work out," I said. 

Scully closed her eyes for two seconds and sighed. "I swear, " I really haven't said a thing. But he puts things together, sees you coming over but not staying. Likes to offer advice. Seize the day, that kind of thing."

"What's his story?"

"I don't know. Mid-sixties, never married, lives alone, like to tell everyone how his leg got busted up in a car accident back in the seventies, hasn't walked right on it since. He's okay. I listen to talk, try not to hurt his feelings. I might have a power cut one night and need to come over."

"Does he live here."

Scully shook her head. "No. There's a young guy across the hall from me -- there's a hell of a story there I'll tell you sometime. And on the first floor Winnifred she works for the library, and across the hall from her, there's another guy call Orland. Older than Barney lives alone, hardly anyone ever comes to see him." She forced a grin. "It's the House of the Damned, I tell you they're all here living alone, they've got no one."

"You do," I stated.

Scully looked away. "I didn't mean that ---" There was a sudden noise from the house. someone coming down the flight of stairs, fast. 

The door swung open and a man, late twenties to early thirties, slim, dark hair, stepped out. He spotted Scully before noticing me.

"Hey, good-lookin'," he said. "What's shakin',"

"Hi, Nate," Scully said, an awkward smile on her face. "I'd like you to meet someone."

"Oh, hey," he said, his eyes landing on me. "Another friend dropping by?"

"This is Fox Mulder. My husband. Mulder this is Nate. My across-the-hall-neighbor." Her eyebrows popped up briefly as she looked at me. This is the guy there is a hell of a story about.

His face quickly flushed, and it took him maybe a tenth of a second to decide whether to extend a hand. "Good to meet you. Heard a lot about you."

I glanced a Scully but she wasn't looking at me. "Where are you off to?" Scully asked "You don't walk dogs this late in the day, do you? Isn't everyone home by now?"

"just going out for something to eat," Nate said, 

"You have dogs?" I asked 

He smiled sheepishly. "Not here, and they're not mine. That's what I do. I've got a dog-walking business. Go from house to house through the day, take my client's mutts out for a stroll while their owners are at work." He shrugged. "I've had a small career change. But I'm sure your wife has told you all about that."

I looked at Scully again, expectantly this time.

"I haven't," Scully said. "Don't let us hold you up."

"Again, nice to meet you," he said to me, then trotted down the stairs, got behind the wheel of the Caddy, and took off.

"A dog walker with a Cadillac?" I said.

"Long story. The short version goes like this. He hit big in the phone app business, the market went south for a while, lost it all, had a nervous breakdown, now walks dogs for people every day while he gets his life back together."

I nodded. This house certainly seemed to be the place where people came to regroup 

"Well," I said

Neither of us spoke for the better part of a minute. Scully watched the street the entire time.

Finally, she said, "I'm ashamed."

"It was an accident," I said. "It was just a crazy accident. You never meant for that to happen."

"I do everything I can to protect and care for people at work, and to care and protect you both at home, and I'm the one that sends her to the hospital."

I didn't know what to say. 

"You probably need to get home and make Em dinner," Scully said. "Giver her a hug from me." She paused. "Tell her I love her."

"She knows, " I said getting up. "But I'll do it." 

She walked me to the car. The smell of freshly mown grass wafted up my nostrils. 

"If there was anything going on, if Emily were in trouble, you'd let me know,"  Scully said. "Right?"

"Of course."

"You don't have to tiptoe around me. I can take it."

"Scully, Everything's fine," I grinned. "Mostly she watches me to make sure I stay out of trouble. I try to throw any wild parties, she nips it in the bud."

Scully rested her head on my chest and I close my eyes at the familiar scent of her raspberry shampoo. Oh, how I've missed her. I refrained from dropping to my knees and begging her to come home. Instead, I simply ran my palm over her red hair and pulled her back leaving a chased kiss on her forehead.

"I'm coming back. I just need a little more time."

"I know." 

"You just keep an eye on Emily, this thing about the teachers being killed, it's got my mind going all kinds of places it shouldn't." 

I forced a smile. "Maybe it was some former student, years later, getting even with teachers who gave him a hard time for not doing his homework. I better watch my back."

"Don't even joke."

I lost my smile. I realized I hadn't been funny. "I'm sorry. We're okay. We are. We'll be better when you come back, but we're getting by. And I'm watching her like a hawk."

"You better."

I got into my Ford Escape, keyed the ignition and pulled away into the street. Driving home, I couldn't get out of my head two things Nate had said.

Hey, good-lookin' was the first.

And the second was: Another friend dropping by?

 

 

 


	3. Three.

"Wanna have some real fun?" the boy asked.

That worried Emily. Maybe not a lot, but a little. She had a pretty good idea what Stuart was getting at. They'd already been having some fun - just above-the-waist stuff, parked out back of Walmart in his dad's old Buick. This car, it was an aircraft carrier. massive hood and trunk, and inside, well, you hardly had to get into the backseat. The front - which went all the way across, no console or shifter in the middle - was the size of a park bench but way, way softer. The car was from the seventies, and when it went around corners, it felt as if she was on a huge boat way out in the Atlantic or something, getting carried away by the waves.

Emily was okay with what they had done so far. She had let him touch her in a couple of places but wasn't sure if she wanted to take things any further. Not yet, anyway.

She was still just fourteen, after all. And even though she knew, with absolute certainty, that that meant she was not a kid anymore, she had to admit that Stuart being sixteen, might know slightly more about the whole sex thing. It wasn't even so much that she was scared about doing it for the first time. What scared her was looking like a total amateur. Everyone knew or thought they knew, that Stuart had already been with plenty of girls. What if she ended up doing it all wrong? Ended up looking like a total idiot?

So she decided to play things cautiously. "I don't know," she said, pulling away from him leaning against the passenger door. "This has been, like, good you know? But I'm not sure about taking things, like, to the next level."

Stuart laughed. "Shit, I'm not talking about that. Although, if you're thinking you're ready, I've come equipped." He started to reach down into the front pocket of his jeans.

Emily slapped his hand playfully. "Then what are you talking about?" 

"It's something totally cool. I swear, you'll piss your pants."

Emly could guess. Maybe some pot? or X. What the hell? She could give something like that a try. It was a little less scary than letting him into her pants. "So what is it? I've tried a few things. Not just pot." A lie, but one had to keep up appearences.

"Nothing like that," Stuart said. "You ever driven Porsche?"

That took her by surprise. "I've never driven anything, you idiot. I won't get my licence for another two years."

"I mean, you ever ridden in a Porsche?"

"Like, is that the sports car?"

"Jesus, you don't know what a Porsche is?"

"Yeah, I know. Okay. Why are you asking me if I've ever had a ride in one?"

"Have you?"

"No," Emily said. "At least I don't think I have. But I don't pay a lot of attention to what kind of car I'm getting into. Maybe I was in one and didn't know it."

"I think," the boy said, "if you'd been in a Porsche you'd kinda know. It's not like an average car. It's all low and swoopy and shit, and fast as fuck."

Emily shook her head. "Okay, so no."

Stuart was kind of hot looking, and one of the cool kids, although not exactly in a good way. He had that don't-give-a-shit thing going on, which had some appeal to a girl who was sick of having to make safe choices. But after being out with him three times she was beginning to think there wasn't a whole lot going on inside that head of his.

Emily hadn't told her father she was seeing Stuart because he'd knew exactly who the boy was. She could recall her dad bringing up his name more than once, back when Stuart was in her dads English class two years earlier. He'd been marking papers in the evening at the kitchen table and said this Stuart kid was thick as a plank and had handed in an empty piece of test paper. not even his name was written on the top. Her dad didn't do this often, he said it was very unprofessional. He said it wasn't right to comment on the work of students his daughter might know, but sometimes, if the kid was dumb enough he slipped. 

Emily remembered a joke her dad had made. for a long time, right up until this year, she'd thought she might like to be an astronaut, someone who went up to the international space station. Her dad said maybe Stuart could be an astronaut, too, because all he did in class was take up space.

Tonight, Emily had to wonder whether maybe her father had this boy nailed.

one time, Stuart had asked her what she wanted to do when she finished school, and when she had told him, he'd said, "seriously? They only send guys up into space."

"Hello?" She'd shot back. "Sally Ride? Svetlana Savitskaya? Roberta Bondar?"

"You can't just make up names," he'd said.

Oh well. it wasn't like she had to marry him. She just wanted to have some fun. She wanted to take a few risks, and wasn't that just what he'd asked if she'd like to do?

"I have definitely never ridden in a Porsche."

Stuart grinned. "Want to?"

She shrugged. "Yeah sure. Why not?"

A cell phone started buzzing.

"That's you," Stuart said.

Emily dug her phone out of her purse, glanced at the screen. "Oh, crap."

"Who is it?"

"My dad. I'm kind of supposed to be home by now." It was nearing ten.

Adopting a deep baritone voice, Stuart said, "You get home right now, young lady, and do your homework."

"Even if her dad was a huge pain in the ass at times, she didn't like other people mocking him. Se hated it, at school, when she'd hear other kids running her dad down. It was no picnic, going to the same school where your dad taught. All the extra expectations to be a good kid, have above average marks. Talk about a cross to bear. Not that her marks were bad. She did pretty well, especially in science, although sometimes she'd write a couple of wrong answers just so she wouldn't get a hundred percent and have the boys call her Amy Farrah Fowler, the nerdy science girl on that TV show.

"You gonna talk to him or not?" Stuart asked as Emily's phoned continued to buzz.

She stared at it, tried to will it to stop, which it finally did after a dozen rings. But seconds later, a text. "Shit," she muttered, "He wants me to call home."

"Fuck. He's got you on a tight leash. Your mom a control freak too?"

If she were home, Emily thought. If she had not bailed on them Two weeks ago, after the whole thing with her hand. She had only had her stitches removed two days ago. 

She ignored his question and turned things back to the topic at hand. "Okay, so did your dad buy you a Porsche?"

"God, no. you think id be driving around in a shitbox tank if he had?"

"Then what?"

"I can get my hands on one in, like, ten minutes, One that we can borrow."

"What, like a dealership?" Emily asked. "Aren't they all going to be closed?" Who'd let them take a test drive at this time of night?

Stuart shook his head. "No, it's not like that. It's at a house that's empty this week. It's on the list."

"What list?"

"A list, okay? That my dad got. They try to keep it up-to-date when people are on vacation, that kind of thing. I check out places where people are away, see what kind of wheels they've got. One time I took a Mercedes, just for, like, twenty minutes, and no one ever knew. Nt a scratch on it. Put it back in the garage just the way it was.

"Who keeps a list like that?" Emily asked. "Whats your dad do? Does he do security stuff, too?" The thing was, she had an inkling of what this boy's father did and would have been surprised to learn it had anything to do with making people feel safer in their homes.

"Yeah," he said offhandedly. "that's what he is. Security."

Emily kept thinking of the call and text from her father. When she had left the house, she had told him she was going to a movie with another girl from her class. Her mom was going to drive. It was a seven o'clock show that was supposed to get out around nine, and she'd get a lift home after.

What would her dad do if he found out she'd lied? Because as lies went, this was a doozy. Emily Wasn't with that girl, and they weren't at the movies. Stuart - not her friend's mother- was going to drop her a block from home. her father would never have let her go out with a boy old enough to drive. And certainly not this boy, this one-time pain-in-the-ass know-nothing student in her father's class, with, as Emily suspected her father knew, a kind of questionable home background.

"What you're talking about sounds like stealing," she said.

Stuart shook his head. "No way. Stealing is when you take the car a keep it or sell it to someone who packs it up in a big cargo container and ships it over to some guy in Arabia or something. We're only borrowing it. Won't even try to see what it can do, because the last thing you want when you are borrowing somebody else's car is a speeding ticket, you know?"

Emily waited a long time before she said, "I guess it would be fun."

Stuart started up the land yacht and headed west.

..............................................................................

"You look all freaked-out," Stuart said to Emily on their way to the house where they would find a Porsche. "But believe me, it's going to be fine. There's, like, no risk at all."

"How are you going to start it? like on TV, you touch some wires together under the steering wheel?"

"Shit, no, that's totally unrealistic. like, the guy gets under there, finds the wires, and in two seconds flat he's got the car going.Doesn't happen. And even if you could get it to start, how are you supposed to unlock the stirring column, right? You need a key for that. In the movies, yeah, maybe you could get the car running, but you could only drive in a straight line. I hate stupid stuff like that in movies," he laughed.

"So you have a key?"

"Not yet." He patted her thigh with his right hand. "Okay, it's just up here. I'll park here and we can walk up half a block."

Emily hadn't paid much attention to where they were going. But they were on a dead end street now, in a nice part of town. Well-manicured lawns, mature trees, houses set back with long driveways. 

"Come on," Stuart said as she got out of the car slowly. They were a few step away when the boy stopped suddenly. "wait a sec. forgot something." 

He went back to the Buick, opened the passenger door, put one knee on the seat, and leaned forward as if rummaging around in the glove box for something. Whatever he found, he tucked into his front waistband of his jeans and pulled his jacket over it. 

"What did you get?" Emily asked when he caught up with her. 

"Flashlight," he said.

He was reading house numbers. He stopped out front of a two story colonial. "This is it. Come on. We can't stand around staring at it. People will notice." 

Except there was no one around.

He grabbed her hand and pulled her up the drive. There was one light on over the front door, another at the side of the house, but he was pretty sure no one from the neighbor's houses could see them.

"Whose place is this?" She asked.

"Somebody named Cummings or something," he snorted. "What a name. Who are you? I'm Cumming," He giggled immaturely to himself. "Let's double-check the garage first, make sure they are there, that we haven't come here for nothing." He tightened his grip on her wrist. 

A garage big enough to fit four cars was around back, attached t the house. Six rectangular windows ran horizontally along the door at eye level. "I just want to make sure," he said.

He reached into his jacket for his phone, used the app that turned it to a flash light, and put it up to the window.

"I thought you went back for a flashlight, Emily said. 

"Jackpot," he said, staring into the garage. "Can you see that? Look in there."

She looked. "I see a car." Two actually. A plain white four door sedan and a low two-door sporty number in red.

"That's not a car," the boy said. "That's a 911. A goddamn Carrera. Now we just have to  
get inside and get the keys."

For the first time, Emily was starting to think this was a really, really bad idea. Her stomach started to float. "I don't think so. I don't like this."

"I told you, it's okay. They are away. We get in without tripping the alarm. Word is they've got a dog -they've got it boarded or something for the week- but it means they won't have motion detectors inside. Stupid pets set them off all the time.

Se wrenched her wrist from his grip. "No. No way."

He whirled around. "What are you gonna do? Walk home?Do you even know where we are? You gonna sit on the curb until I get back? Come on. I wasn't able to to get the key or find the pass code with my dad's stuff, but that's okay, We'll get in through the basement window."

Emily's phone dinged. Another text from her father.

"Your old man again?

She nodded, then put the phone away as he turned from her and knelt by the basement window. 

"The sensor should be in the corner here," he said. He kicked the glass. Emily jumped, put both hands to her mouth. "Just sounds loud because you're standing right there. No one will hear that. And there's carpet on the basement floor." Shards of glass lined the frame like sharks teeth. "I could fit through here, but I'dleed to death after."

He reached into his pocket of his jeans and came out with a credit card that had a couple of short pieces of duck tape stuck to it, and then something shiny about the size of a matchbook. He looked back at the girl, unfolded the shiny items and grinned. "Tin foil. We just slip that over the contact and hold it in place..."

He had his hand inside the window, working on the upper right corner.

"........And now, when we open the window, the alarm... does... not...go ...off." His arm still snaked into the house, he cranked open the window, creating a larger opening, without any shards to catch him on the way in. "I gotta be honest - that's the part that always scares me. I was ready t run if I had to.

He dropped his legs in first, supporting himself with his elbows, then dropped about a foot. "Piece of cake," he said. "Come on."

She felt chilled, even though the summer night air hadn't dipped below seventy. She tilted her head back, scanned the heavens. Despite the light pollution, she could make out the stars. She remembered the telescope she had when she was a little girl. How she used to study the stars from her bedroom window, searching for asteroids, worried that one of them would strike and wipe out her parents. The whole planet, too. But once you'd lost your whole family, the rest of the world seemed incidental.

Lost families. Something of a theme in her household.

And now her family was less than whole, what with her mom now living in an old apartment over on Georgetown. Emily thought she would have moved back by now, but nope. She was trying to make a point, staying away this long? Was all this talk that she needed some time to "get her head together" the truth, or just a bullshit story to cover up the fact that she didn't love Emily and didn't want to be in the same house with her?

Not that things weren't a little more calm these days, with just her dad at home.

Her mom was so uptight, so worried some calamity would befall her daughter. Freaking out all the time. Wanting t know where she was every second of the day. Who she was seeing. Making her phone home every couple of hours. Wasn't all that supposed to be over? Years ago? After her mom had finally found out what had happened to her when she was a teenager? 

Well, I'm fourteen now, Emily thought. How long was this going to go on? Would her mom want her to wear one of those ankle bracelets when she went to college so she could monitor her every move?

Emily sometimes thought her mother had her convinced something awful would happento her that she just wanted to get it over with. Bring it on. The anipicipation was always worse than the event.

Was that, Emily wondered, why she was with this boy now, about to do something stupid? Because it would create some kind of crisis, force her mother to come home? Did she really want her mom to find out about this?

"Hey!" Stuart whispered. , his head framed in the window. "You coming or what?"

She got on her knees, back to the window, and worked her legs through. The boy grabbed a hold of her and eased her gently to the basement floor.

"Don't turn on any lights," he said.

"Like that's the first thing I'm going to do," she said. 

They were in a basement rec room. Leather couch, Two recliners, big flat screen TV bolted to the wall. They crossed the carpet, glass crunching underfoot, and found their way to the stairs.

From what she could see, it was a nice house. Modern furniture and decorations, plenty of leather and aluminum and glass. Not like her house. Her parents thought great furniture were the flat packs and build yourselves from Ikea.

"Aren't the people gonna know someone was here when they find the window broken?" Emily asked.

"So what? Won't matter then," he still had his phone in flashlight mode, guiding them through the house. "People usually keep their car keys somewhere near the front door, like in a draw or a dish or something."

They'd now reached the front hall, where a long narrow table with four draws was pushed up against the wall.

"Yeah," he said. "This is the spot. I can guarantee it."

He pulled open the first drawer and held an illuminated phone over it. "Just gloves and shit in here."

When he pulled on the handle of the second drawer, it stuck, and he bumped himself with his hand as it broke free. Something heavy hit the marble floor.

"What was that?" Emily asked.

"I justdroped something."

"What the -- is that a gun?"

"No, it's a tuna fish sandwich. The hell do you think it is?"

"You keep a fucking gun in your car?"

"It's not mu car, and it's not my gun. It's my dads. Here, hold it for me while I do this."

"I'm not holding---"

"Just fucking do it!" Stuart said, shoving the gun at her. "You're starting to become a total pain in the ass - you know that?"

"What are you gonna do? Shoot somebody?" She was beginning to feel nauseous.

"No, but if somebody tries to mess with us they'll think twice when they see this."

She still resisted as he pushed the gun on her, but she could tell he was getting angry. Would he hurt her if she didn't hold it? Punch her in the face? How would she explain that when she got home? A bloody nose, a black eye?

"Okay," Emily said.

The gun was heavy, warm and foreign in her hand. She couldn't remember ever holding one before. It felt as if it weighed fifty pounds, pulling her arm towards the floor.

"Just don't pull on the trigger," he said. "You have to know what you're doing before you start shootin' one of those."

"Like you do," she said. "Like you're some sort of expert."

"Don't get all bitchy on me, Okay? Shit, no keys in this drawer, either." He opened the third one and shook his head. "Damn, where do they keep those friggin Porsche keys? It just makes sense for them to be---"

"Did you hear that?" Emily asked.

Stuart froze. "Hear what?"

"Shut up, listen," she whispered, with an edge of panic in her voice.

The two of them held their breath for a good ten seconds.

"I don't hear anything. What did you hear?" he asked.

"I thought I heard somebody moving around. like a floor creaking or something." Without thinking about it, she tightened her grip on the gun, but kept it pointed at the floor.

"You're just imagin---"

He stopped. He'd heard something, too.

"Shit," he said, looking toward the kitchen.

"Emily moved toward the front door. On the wall, just next to it, the secruity key pad, a small green light glowing.

Green? Doesn't that mean--?

"No!"Stuart hissed. "Open that and the alarm'll go off."

"But the light is--"

"The noise sounded like it was in here," he said quietly, moving on the balls of his feet towards the kitchen.

"No!" she whispered after him. "Let's go." She wa thinking, even if they went out of the front door, and the alarm was set to go off, and it did, they could still get to his car before the police or the security company showed up.

"It's probably nothing. I'm not runnin' out of here for no good reason. We're gonna find those keys."

He held his phone at arm's length, casting a light on the floor head of him.

"Please," Emily said.

"Stay close to me," he said, inching forward, reaching out an encouraging hand to her.

"I'm scared."

He grinned. "You're the one with the gun, Em. What's there to be worried about?"


	4. Chapter 4

One phone message and a text. No response to either. I struggled to remember the name of the girl Emily said she was going to the movies with. Sarah? Stacey? I was pretty sure it was Stacey Miller. Stacey's mother was going to be dropping Emily home on the way back from the theatre. But I had no number for Stacey or her mother. These days, now that every kid on the planet had a cell phone, we were letting down our guard when it came to getting info on how to reach their friends.

Scully would have known. She'd have been able to tell me who Stacey Miller was, where she lived, her favorite pop star, how long she and Emily had been friends. She'd have probably talked to Stacey's mother at some point, too, and had the women's number stored to her contact list. Whenever Emily met someone new, Scully would manage to get all the particulars in case she might need them later.

Maybe if I'd been through what Scully had, this kind of thoroughness would be second nature to me, too. 

I liked to think I kept a close eye on Emily, but there was no doubt I didn't watch her the way her mother did. I cut her some slack. If she was ten minutes past curfew, I didn't launch the Spanish Inquisition. I kept the waterboarding to a minimum. I wanted to be able to trust her. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that I want to trust that she had some common sense. But no teenager is trustworthy. I wasn't at that age and Scully was the first to admit she wasn't, either.

So much about being a parent is holding your breath and hoping everything will be okay. So yeah, I gave Emily more freedom. I made deas with her. I told her I'd cut her more slack if she'd promise me that even while her mother was living elsewhere, that when we were together as a family, she'd dial it down. Not everything had to be an argument.

Emily said okay.

But now she had burned me.

I could sit here and wait for her to show up, or I could strike out looking for her. Trouble was, I had no idea where to begin. And the odds were, the moment I left, she'd show up here. I wanted a word with her the moment she walked through the door.

I was standing in the kitchen when the phone rang. I had the receiver to my ear before the first ring. But before I said a word, I saw from the caller ID that it was not Emily.

"Hi," I said.

"You must have been sitting on the phone," Scully said.

"Just in the kitchen, sneaking a cookie," I lied. "Is everything alright? You okay?"

"Yeah, everything's fine. Just.... I felt bad about earlier, about the beer." 

"The what?"

"When you came by. I didn't offer you a beer."

"I didn't even notice."

"When you left I realized what I'd done. Sat there with a wine right in front of you. It was rude of me," She sighed.

"Really, don't worry about it," I said.

She hesitated. "It was deliberate."

"Oh." 

"I needed time, for just me. I thought if I offered you a beer, you'd have -- I feel sick about this."

"It's okay," I said, trying to ignore the pinch of hurt In my gut. 

"The thing is, the moment you left, I burst into tears and hated myself for not getting you one. Because I realized then that i didn't want you to go, Jesus, I'm a mess. I really am."

"Have you seen Naomi this week?"

"Yeah. I look at her sometimes and think she really be so fucking tired of me. Listening to me whining all these years."

"I doubt that,"

"It's just, I can't shake this post-trauma. That's what's making me hell to live with for Emily."A pause. "Is she back from the movies yet?"

"No," I said honestly.

Even though she wasn't here, in this house, Scully often needed to know that Emily was safely home before she could get to sleep at her place.

"When was she supposed to be back?"

"Scully," I said

"I know, I know. All I was thinking was, since she has work tomorrow, I hate her too go out to late and go to work tired. You can hurt in a kitchen if you're not paying attention."

Emily had a summer job at the Yacht Club, waiting tables in the dining room.

"Don't worry shes just a few minutes late. I texted her a couple of minutes ago. Everything fine." Not quite a lie.

"Okay," Scully said.

"What'd you do tonight?"

"I had to go over to see Barney. I forgot the rent was due, and he like cash, so i went to an ATM a couple of hours ago and drove over to pay him.

"He offer you any marital advice?"

Scully laughed but not hard. "He says to me, 'I've been alone my whole life, never had anyone. You don't know how lucky you are to have somebody, so don't throw that away.' That's what he said."

"Scully?"

Nothing.

"You okay?"

"Yeah. I'm fine."She said.

"You're not throwing anything away. I know that."

Unless I was wrong. Had I misread things? I'd believed Scully when she said she needed some space. Timeout. Was she having second thoughts about us? About me? Which led me to think about what Nate had said. About another friend dropping by to visit her. I was about to ask who it was when the line beeped. It was Emily's cell. 

"Hang on a second. That's our girl on the other line."

"Sure."

I hit the button.

"Emily!?" I said, an edge already in my voice. "You know what time it is?" I wasn't yelling, however. It was as if I somehow thought Scully could hear me on the other line.

"Dad. Dad, you have to come."

She was talking rapidly, her voice shaking.

I could tell instantly, that something was not right, so I switched from Angry Dad to Concerned Dad.

"Honey, you okay? I though what's-her-face's mum was bringing you home?"

"You have to come. You have to come right now!"

"Where are you? What's going on?"

"Something's happened, Dad. Something happened"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

She told me I could find her could find in a small store attached to a gas station a few miles up the road. I tried to get her to tell me what was going on, but all she'd say was that I should hurry. And one last thing. "Don't tell mom."

"I'm on my way," I said, then clicked back to Scully. "Hey."

"Hey, Is everything okay?"

"Yeah," I said. "There has been a problem with her ride, so she's asked me to pick her up."

"If you want I could pick her up and bring her home."

"No," I said maybe a little too quickly. "That's okay."

I was thinking about those two words Emily had said. Something's happened. Just what a parent wants to hear. The mind races. If she were old enough to drive, I'd have guessed fender bender or a speeding ticket. But I could rule that out given she was only fourteen - unless she'd decided to get behind the wheel of one of her friend's cars illegally?

Jesus, don't let it be that.

Maybe she'd been stopped by the cops for drinking or having alcohol in her possession. Maybe she smuggled beer into the movie theater? I wasn't naive enough to think Emily was an angel in that regard. A year ago, when she was thirteen, Scully had discovered a liquor store receipt in the front pocket of her jeans while doing the laundry. We needed the intervention of the UN peacekeeping team after that one. We finally got her to confess she'd gotten a girlfriend's older brother to buy her some Baily's Irish Cream, the girls felt very sophisticated adding it to their coffee, and he'd given her the receipt so she knew how much to pay him back.

Yeah, it could easily be something like that tonight. And even though Scully had said she didn't need to be protected, that she could handle it if there was a problem at home or with our daughter, she sounded fragile tonight and she didn't need this, as much as I don't like to keep secrets from Scully, if I took her up on the offer to pick Emily up there could be World War Three within the hour.

"Are you sure?" Scully asked. "I don't mind."

I thought of inventing an excuse. Telling her we might be coming down with the flu and there was no sense exposing her to it. But if that were the case, why had I allowed Em' to go to the movies? Anything I could think of seemed incredibly lame and I didn't want to start spinning a web of lies over something that, for all I knew and hoped, wasn't that big a deal. Besides I needed to get going. I'd been off the phone with Em' only a few seconds but was feeling an urgency to get n the car and fetch her.

"No," I said firmly. "I got this. But thank you."

"Okay, then," Scully said, sounding slightly miffed and maybe a tad suspicious.

"I'll talk to you tomorrow," I said.

"Sure, Tell Em' I said goodnight."

"I will," I promise her. "Night, Scully."

"Night."

There was a silence between us before she hung up.

I grabbed my keys out of the dish and bolted out the door. I hit the remote to unlock the escape, got behind the wheel and pulled out of our driveway and into the night.

As I pull my car on the lot, Emily comes charging out of the convenience store. Head down, brown hair hanging down to cover her eyes. She ran to the car. She pulled on the door handle before I had a chance to unlock it. I hit the button, but she grabbed for the handle too quickly and for a second time couldn't get into the car.

"Wait!" I shouted through the glass.

She dropped her arm, waited to hear the click, the swung the door open and jumped into the front passenger seat. She wouldn't look at me, but from the brief glimpse I had of her face revealed damp cheeks.

"What the hell happened?" I asked.

"Just go."

"Wheres your friend? How did you end up here? Why are you alone?"

"Just go," she said again. "Just drive, please."

I kept my eyes on her for a few beats before putting the car into drive and driving off the lot, out between the pumps and back on to the road, heading west.

"Emily," I said firmly, but gently, "You can't expect me to drive out here in the middle of the night to pick you up without you offering up some kind of explanation."

"It's not the middle of the night," she said. "It's only just after Ten. You always exaggerate."

"Okay, It's Ten-fifteen. What's going on? You said something happened?"

"I just want to get home. Then... maybe.... I can tell you."

We rode in silence the rest of the way. I kept glancing over at her. Her head hung low, her hands were in her lap and she appeared to be studying her fingers which she laced together, took apart, laced together again. It looked to me like she was trying to keep them from shaking.

She was getting out of the car before I had it parked, then made a beeline for the front door. By the time I'd caught up to her, she was trying to unlock it with her own key, but her hand was shaking so much she couldn't slide it into the lock.

"Let me," I said, edging her out of the way and using mine.

Once the door was open, she ran up the stairs as fast as she could.

"Emily!" I shouted. If she thought she was going to lock herself in her bedroom and avoid an interrogation, she was very, very wrong. I chased her up the stairs, but she didn't run to her room. She was in the bathroom, oh her knees in front of the toilet.

She attempted to pull back her hair as she retched once, then a second time. I had mixed feelings about whether to help her. When your kids experiment with drinking, maybe they need to endure the consequences without sympathy. Although If Emily had been drinking, surely I'd have smelled it on her breath when she got into the car. I hadn't noticed anything.

Emily retched a third time, but hardly anything came up. I handed her a thick wad of tissues to blot her face with, squatted down next to her, and reached over to the handle to flush the toilet. Emily slid back from the toilet ad propped herself up against the wall.

It was my first real look at her, and she did not look good.

"You going to be okay?" I asked her.

No response.

"What did you drink? I didn't notice anything on your breath."

"Nothing," she whispered.

"Em'."

"Nothing! Okay?"

Maybe she was really coming down with something, the flu, and here I was giving her shit for being sick.

"You sick? Did you eat something bad?"

"I'm not sick," she said, so quietly I could barely hear her.

I said nothing for the better part of a minute. I took the wadded tissues in her hand, tossed them in the basket, then ran a washcloth under the cold tap. "Here," I said. She wiped her mouth again, then put the cool cloth to her forehead.

"It's time, I said.

Emily fixed her wet eyes on me. I thought I saw fear in them.

"You weren't with Stacey," I said.

"Sandra."

"Okay. You weren't with Sandra, were you?"

Her head moved from side to side half an inch.

"And you didn't go to the movies."

"No."

"Who were you with?" I asked. When she didn't respond, I added, "What's his name?"

Emily swallowed. "Stuart."

I nodded. "Stuart what?"

She mumbled something.

"I didn't catch that," I said.

"Koch."

I had to think for a second. I knew that name. "Stuart Koch?"

A furtive glance my way, then she turned away. "Yeah."

"I taught a Stuart Koch a couple of years ago. Tell me its not the same kid?"

"It might be," She said. "I mean, yeah, it is. He went to our school, but he dropped out this year."

That was the Stuart I knew. "Jesus, Em', how did you hook up with him?" I was trying to get my head around it. Stuart Koch was the kind of kid that would ask you how to spell DUI. A chronic underachiever if ever there was one."Where'd you meet him?"

"Does it matter?"

"He's a lost kid. hopeless. going nowhere. Honestly."

She shot me a look. "So what are you saying? He wasn't worth saving because he's not a girl?"

Her aim was good with that one.

I knew that was a reference to a student I'd had seven years ago. Jane Skinner, her name was. A troubled kid, always getting into fights. No one on staff had any use for her. But I'd thought there was something there. It came through in her writing assignments. She had a real gift, and I ended up going to bat for her. Of course, there were some extenuating circumstances, too, but those aside, Jane had struck me as a kid who could amount to more. She ended up going to college, and not long ago I'd run into her.

I'd talked about her from time to time with Emily, so she knew the story.

"It's not that," I said defensively. "Jane had... She had potential. If Stuart had any it wasn't evident to me at the time." I hesitated. "If I've misjudged him feel free to set me straight."

She had nothing to say to that, and let it go. I sensed there was a more immediate problem involving this kid. Were they boyfriend-girlfriend? If so, when had it started? How long had this been going on without mine or her mother's knowledge? Had they had some kind of fight this evening? A break-up?

"What were you doing at the gas station?"

"I walked there," she said, wiping a tear from her cheek. "I walked for, like, ten minutes or so, and when I got there I figured it would be an easy place for you to come get me."

"Was Stuart driving?" A nod. "But he left you to walk alone at night to that gas station? That sure as hell speaks well for him."

"It's not like that," she said. "You don't understand."

"I don't understand because you haven't told me anything. Did he hurt you? Did he do some things he shouldn't have?"

Her lips parted as if she was about to say something, then closed.

"What?" I asked. "Em', I know something's are easier to talk about with your mother, but I need to know,  did he.... did he try to make you do things that made you uncomfortable? 

I felt sick. I wanted to kill him just at the thought of him putting his hands on her.

A slow torturous nod. Oh, God.

"Oh, Honey," I said, trying to stay calm, not wanting to scare her from telling me the rest of the story. 

"It's not what you think," she said. "It wasn't.... It wasn't that kind of stuff. He knew about a car."

" What car?"

"A Porsche. He knew where there was one that he wanted to take me for a ride in."

"But it wasn't his car?"

Emily shook her head.

"Did it belong to someone he knew?"

"No," she whispered. "He was kind of going to steal it. I mean, not forever, but just for a little while and then he was going to take it back."

I put a hand to my forehead. "Good god, Emily, tell me you and this boy didn't take somebody's car for a joy ride." My mind made several leaps in a nanosecond. They'd stolen a car. They had hit a pedestrian. They'd fled the scene and--

"We didn't steal it," she said. But she didn't say it in a way that made me feel relieved.

"You got caught? Did he get caught? trying to take the car?"

"No," Em' said.

I folded the lid down on the toilet and took a seat. "You gotta help me out here, Em'. I can't play twenty questions with you over and over until we get to what happened. Tell me that when Stuart went to take this car, that's when you walked away."

"Not totally," she said and sniffed. I handed her more tissues and she blew her nose. Even if she wasn't sick, she looked terrible. Eyes red and bloodshot, skin pale, her hair tangled in strands. An image of her when she was five or six flashed before my eyes, when Scully and I took her to the beach and she was covered in sand from head to toe, building sand castles at the water's edge, flashing a smile with three teeth missing. Did that girl still exist? Was she still here? buried deep inside this one curling in on herself in front of me? I waited. I could sense her steeling herself. getting ready to tell me, then face the music after I knew what she'd done.

"I think...."

"You think what?"

I, um... I think..."

"Jesus, Em', you think WHAT? I watch her struggle to find the words. She knows she's in deep shit.

"I think..... I think I might have shot somebody."

 

"

 

 

 

 


End file.
